The colonists form a pecuUar class in the empire, being in the enjoyment of many valuable privileges, havuig their own tribunals, being exempt from the conscription, and liable to fewer taxes, than the population generally. They do not, indeed, enjoy all the advantages of the inostranzi, or foreigners, for these have all the advantages, and are liable to none of the burdens of natives.
All the colonies are looked on as forming one great confederation, though, in many respects, owing to the distance between them, the connexion is a very slight one ; still it is not merely a nominal one, for a clergyman will sometimes remove from one colony to another, and there are always a number of beggars, who stroll from colony to colony, and bring tidings to each of the weal or woe of the sister commmiities.
Wlien the colonies were first formed they were not, of course, all endowed alike. Those in South Russia generally received sixty Dissiateens of land for each family, and an " advance" of two cows, two oxen, two horses, agricultmral implements, and a small sum of money, the amount of which became afterwards a debt due from the colony. The sixty dissiateens of land are never to be divided, but always to continue one property, for which the colonists are to pay a yearly rent to the emperor, not at present amounting to more than fourteen rubles for each male. The whole revenue derived by the emperor from the German colonics may amount to about 2,000,000 rubles annually. Though the law prohibits a division of the lot of gromid assigned to a family, there is nothmg to prevent several families from settlmg on it, if they can draw a subsistence from it.
The German colonists were called into the country, partly to serve the Eussiims as models in agriculture and gardening ; and though many seem to doubt whether this object has been in any way gained, I am by no means disposed to share in those doubts. It is a common thing to hear the liussians in the vicmity of a German colony say, " Tak i Nyemhii sddluyut" (that's the vray the Germans do), and this alone would be enough to convince me that the example of my countrymen has not been altogether tlixown away. That the Russian empire, however, has made a vjduable acquisition in the 250,000 Germans whom it has induced to settle -vvithin its hmits, is a question to which I cannot hesitate about the answer. The farmers on the steppe are not certainly such farmers as we see at home ; they smack of the steppe ; but it is impossible to carry on farming in a country which is by nature a desert, with the same care and success as in a country that is by nature a garden. Still the German husbandry on the steppe is far superior to any that the steppe ever saw before the Germans came tliere. Tlie Germans are the drst that ever attempted any systematic measures for comiteractuig the ravages of the locusts. The Germans liave been the great exth-pators of the snakes, by which the country was formerly infested to a feiuf ul extent. When there is famine in the country it is always to the Germans that the improvident Russians look for the means of subsistence. The Germans till tlie fields that the Greeks and others of their indolent neighbours would leave fallow. The Germans are never in arrear with their taxes ; and what capital they accumulate is always employed in useful undertakings. It was not without good reason that a German colonist once proudly said to me, " Wben the emperor comes mto this country he cannot but rejoice to see us here : he must own that it is to us Russia owes the cultivation of the steppe I"
NAVIGATION OF THE DNIESTER — TROGLODYTES.
We took a. boat at a place called Mayak, and rowed slowly downi the Dniester, till we entangled ourselves in the forests of reeds that clothe its banks. These seemed at first silent, melancholy, and lifeless ; but no sooner had a pair of eagles made their appearance than there arose on every side such a rushing, screaming, and fluttering of wings, that it was evident they were fully peopled. Ducks shot forth from the banks into the open water, peHcans darted from among the reeds, herons plunged in, seeking concealment among them, and the cries of hundreds of others continued as long as the eagles were in sight. At this part of the river, only just above the point where it swells into a liman of from four to eight miles in width, it narrows to seven and a half French feet. The rapidity of its course is here very great, from three to four feet per second, whilst in the liman it is all but stationary. Immediately before its mouth in the hman there is a sandbank with only a few feet of water, so that ships can neither go in nor out ; but a deep narrow arm of the liman rims backward in a direction nearly parallel with the river, and this has been brought into connection with it by means of a canal.